What is an A+, B+, etc, chord?
"I cannot seem to find the structure for G+ and D+ anywhere."

The `+' notation is a synonym for `+5', so the C+ chord, for example, is a C+5 chord.
You can now find these chords, with the `+' notation, in Chord House.

What is an A5, B5, etc, chord?
"F5, is this really a chord, or merely a typo?"
"What are power chords, and where can I find them?"
"Do you have Rock chords?"

A power chord, such as the F5, for example, is basically a normal chord, but with the
exception that only the two or three
lowest sounding notes are played. They're used a lot in Rock music.
While the F5 is one example of a power chord, there are a lot more, as you can see in
the Power chords listing in Chord House. They all look very similar to eachother. Just
scroll through the list, you'll see the pattern soon enough.

How do I play an Ab, Bb, etc, chord?
"I do not read music and I am trying to figure out which chords correspond with 'Eb,' 'Bb,' and 'Ab' on your site."
"Was wondering how you play chords such as Ebm or Abm. Are those flat? I always see sharped chords, but never flat chords. How do you play these?"
"I just love your site, but I can't seem to find any flat chords."

Chords such as Ab, Bb, etc, are written in the flat notation. The chords in
the Chord House lists are all written in the sharp notation, for example: G#,
or A#. For the piano and guitar it doesn't matter which notation you use, as long as
you keep in mind that the two notations translate to eachother in the following way:
Ab = G#, Bb = A#, Db = C#, and Eb = D#. Sometimes you might even see something like
Cb. The Cb is just a B chord.

What are these 'Slash chords'?
"How do I get G/B chords?"
"I need help with these chords please: G/B, D/F#, F#11/A, F6(11)/A"
"Can you please tell me how to play the following Chords: A/C# and D/F#?"
"I have been looking everywhere for the chord G/D. Can you help me out?"

A G/B chord is a G chord with a B in the bass. Similarly, the G/D chord is a G with a D in the bass.
To figure out the finger setting for the G/B chord, for example, find
a G chord that is high enough on the neck so you can find a B note that is lower in tone than the
root (G) of your G chord. Play this lower B instead of the G root. For G/B and G/D, this will look like:

G/B

G/D

What is the H, or Hm, etc, chord?
"Frequently [..] I see a chord that is written like this: 'Hm'. There are some other variations of this but most of the time it is this way. What is it? I thought that G was the highest Chord there was in the alphabet?"

The H is used in Germany and Scandinavia to indicate the B note.
What is confusing is that they indicate the Bb chord with `B'. So, when you
have tabs that come from Germany or Scandinavia, watch out for this:
H stands for B, and B stands for A#/Bb.

How do I press multiple strings with one finger?
"How am I supposed to use finger #1 on two string at once when they're not next to each other, like with E (4fr.) or A (5fr.), for example?"

No problem: when you see the same finger indicated on notes not
next to each other, you'll see that the strings in between are actually played by other
notes higher up the neck. In case of the E (4fr.), for example, the B string is played with finger 2,
producing a high E tone in the chord. When you think about this, you realize that it
doesn't matter whether or not you press that same string with finger 1 as well :-)
So, this means that you can actually press the notes indicated by the same finger, by simply
putting that finger flat over the strings, including the string between the two notes.
This is called `barring'.
Check out E7 on the 7th fret for example: here you make a barre over the five highest strings
(all but the low E).
And check out the A chord on the 5th fret: just put your index finger all the way accross all
six strings.
Chords like these are called barre chords.

Where are the transcriptions?
"In Chord House, there is no transcription part of the page that I saw. Maybe there was, but I didn't see it."

Chord House currently does not provide any song transcriptions or tablature. There are
two reasons for this (and just tell me if you don't agree)

Once you know the chords for a song, Chord House helps you find out the fingering for these chords.
This way you won't be blocked by chords you're unfamiliar with, or aren't too sure off.

Transcriptions themselves are already widely available on many great websites, such
as TabCrawler.com for example.

Can I register for Chord House as an executable program?
"Is your chord finder tool available as an executable (non-Web) file? If so, what is the registration fee?"
"I'm interested in downloading the complete Chord House Guitar Room. Is there any way I could do this? If not, can I purchase it?"
"I do not have internet access at home. Is this program / system available as a download?"

I'm sorry, but no, it's not available for download other than through your
Internet browser. Chord House is meant as a free online quality resource, available for everybody anywhere in
the world, independent of what platform they're running on their computer.
It's not for sale, you don't have to register for it, and most likely I will never devote my time
to building a stand-alone executable version. There are a few P.C. chord finder applications out there, either
cheap or free. Just do a search on the Internet, and you should find them easily enough.

What about a left-handed option?
"Is there any way you could start working on being able to flip the chords for people who are left-handed? There may be more of us than you think.....2 of my good friends are also lefty guitar players....and I'm sure there's more out there!!"

The "Guitar Room (Easy)" is based on a database of finger settings,
and only displays finger settings for right-handed players.

However, the left-handed option is available in the
"Guitar Room (Advanced)". This new room is based on actual rules instead,
that tell how certain chords
are built up. This allows for nice new features such as finger diagrams for both
right-handed and left-handed guitar players, but also alternative tunings,
capo settings(*), and different orientations of the fret board.

(*) capo settings feature not implemented yet

What about alternate tunings?
"How about adding chord tabs for other tunings (esp. Drop D)?"
"Wondering if there you know a source for guitar chorsd/scales for the open tunings, particularly E and G?"

Chord House now has a rule-based guitar
scale and chord finder, the "Guitar Room (Advanced)".
This room has powerful new features such as
alternate tunings, but also capo settings, different orientations
of the fretboard, and even finger diagrams for both right-handed and left-handed
guitar players. It has a list of alternate tuning presets, but you can even
tune the strings individually, so you can get the chord and scale information even for your
own custom tuning.
Although the "Guitar Room (Easy)" won't tell you yet how to play the chords for alternate guitar tunings,
it's really not that hard to figure out, at least not for the `Drop-D tuning'. For this tuning, the
top string is not tuned to the low E, but to the low D one whole step down.
The advantage of this
is that this gives you the tuning D-A-D for the top three stings, which is a Root-5th-Root
configuration, allowing you to play R5 chords (power chords) by simply
barring these three strings. Basically, the finger setting for chords with this tuning is only
different in that you move up two frets on the top string.
Here are two examples of finger settings for chords in the DADGBE tuning:

F5

A5

Just compare them to what you find in Chord House for the regular EADGBE tuning.

Can I get all the chords?
"Can you please send me all the chords I will ever need?"
"I need to know how to print all the chords without doing each chord separately."

No, I can't `send you' all the chords you will ever need, because the number of possible chords is
virtually unlimited. And if you want all the chords that are in Chord House: when you have downloaded
my page, you have all the chords, and you can scroll through all of them, even if you're offline.
If you want a `complete collection' of chords on paper, just get a chord dictionary from the book shop.
The whole point of the print feature here is that you can print out your own selection of chords,
for example print out the finger settings for one particular song.

Can I get all the Power chords?
"I want all the power chords, but that would take forever to get. What do I do?"

Just learn them. Power chords are easy. Scroll through my list: you'll see the pattern soon enough.

Can I get a copy of Chord House for my site?
"We would like to mirror your pages on our server..."
"I have a personal site and it has a guitar chart and if you let me to use your chord script I want to put it into my site. Can you send the script to me?"

Although I am very honored by many request to copy my pages onto other sites, I would like
Chord House to remain part of looknohands.com only. Chord House is meant as a truly useful and beautiful free online resource for everybody
in the world, and I am continously updating and improving the data and look of the site, very
often in response to direct requests from visitors.
Over time, I will build up my site as one that consists of inspiring design and one that offers
truly useful information and tools in an interactive environment (because that is still hard
to find on the Internet these days).
Having my site mirrored on other sites will make it harder to keep updating and improving all
instances of Chord House, and perhaps even more important is that this will deprive me from the most
inspiring feedback of all: visitor counts and comments.

Can you advise me how to start learning guitar?
"I would really like to learn how to play the guitar. Can you give me any help?"

What I found the easiest way to start learning guitar was getting music books of
my favorite music. Of pretty much any rock artist or band, there are music books laying out the
songs, including guitar chord diagrams (little pictures like the finger settings on my website).
You'd look up the easiest songs and just try those out first. In the beginning it might be weird
and difficult, but at some point it will get much easier. Naturally, you have to make sure that
your guitar is tuned correctly.
Of course, there is a lot more to playing guitar than just reading chords. I would strongly suggest
to just take some lessons from either a friend who plays guitar or from a teacher. It will get you
started in the beginning while making sure you don't learn bad habits, and it will improve your
playing skills over the long run.

What is a damped string?
"I was wondering what 'damped strings' are."

A `damped string' is really a string you do not play. They're also called `muted
strings'.
Sometimes, when the string is in between two string you do play for example, it's
difficult to just not play this particular string, so what you'd do is damp or mute it instead.
You damp a string by putting one of your fingers on it, without pressing it down. This way,
when you strum this string (while playing the chord), it won't be able to vibrate and produce
a tone.
So, a damped string is a string you either don't strum or damp/mute (you damp the sound/vibration
of it) by putting a finger on it without pressing it down.

Chord House doesn't work for me, how come?
"I must be doing something wrong, but I can't seem to get the chord finder to work. How do I do it?"
"I keep getting Java script errors or something like that"
"I was in the house, so to speak, but could not print anything."
"...for some reason the chords won't print? it tells me the script of the page is messed up. Please advise."

Chord House works for
Netscape 4 and higher and IE 4 and higher. It also works for the latest AOL browser, which
is version 5 I believe. It should work on any platform, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. It might not
work for Opera and WebTV browsers, but I haven't been able to test that.
So, if you get error messages of some sort, or something is just not working, chances are that
your browser doesn't support certain Javascript routines. Upgrade your favorite browser to the
latest version and try again.
Only the "Guitar Room (Easy)" currently has the feature to print out a selection of chords.